


bluets

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Curtain Fic, Domestic, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Injury Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 08:32:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9713504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy asks Coulson for some help picking the curtains (yes, it's *literally* curtain fic).





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nausicaa_of_phaeacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/gifts).



**one**

If she hadn’t painted the wall blue - easier to see in his condition - maybe the house would have seemed gray to him. He is still recovering from his injury, and Daisy picked this time for her vacation, he wonders why the coincidence, and to set up a house downtown.

Why blue? he wonders, too. Not a color that ever brought her anything good, only pain. Maybe that’s why. Maybe Daisy and her complicated reasons.

“Actually, this color is called robin’s egg blue,” she explains with a complicit smile.

Ah.

“I can’t see it very well yet.”

He smiles, not knowing what to feel about such an injury. It’s not like it’s painful. A blow to the head and when he woke up the colors had disappeared. Then day by day they are coming back. It’s not painful yet it makes him feel more like a wounded soldier than any other injury. Well, except for maybe losing his hand.

“Hey, thanks for helping out today, I know you’re supposed to be recovering.”

Coulson shakes his head, she is the one doing him a favor. She must know that, right?

He squints at the painted all, trying if that makes the colors brighter.

Daisy comes closer, her arm like she wants to touch his head but thinks better of it, her arm raised and then falling at her side again. The warm, apologetic expression on her face. No one else can manage that expression. Not when it comes to him anyway. He should be used to it now, after all these years.

Instead of touching his head, the spot of his injury, she sways her hips against him, friendly.

“In case I haven’t said it already a thousand times, I’m really sorry about your eyes, it was my mission, I’m responsible. How’s the thing coming?”

“Thousand and one,” he teases her, and Daisy rolls her eyes just a little bit, just enough that she looks six years younger for a moment. “And there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, it’s my brain.”

“Okay, whatever, but how’s that going?”

“The doctors said in a week or so I can go back on the field,” he tells her.

“Good.”

Is she planning to stay here until then? he wonders. He’s glad she is taking a break, if anything.

“It’s a weird injury,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “I’ve never-”

“I always thought my head was harder than this,” he says.

Daisy chuckles, a little too amused for what the joke really was. But she normally laughs at his bad jokes, so it’s nothing out the ordinary.

Coulson thinks about returning the gentle hip nudge but in the end he just runs his fingers over her elbow a moment.

“I’ve got you a housewarming present, actually.”

He retrieves the large bag he had left by the door.

“You managed to locate it?” Daisy says, her face lit up (he didn’t think she’d have such a reaction, he didn’t think it meant anything to her), as she lifts the small record player from the bag. 

“Yes, two Directors of SHIELD afterwards I found it in storage,” he explains.

“You sure it’s okay for me to keep this?” Daisy asks, very politely. But something in her voice, like she’s afraid he’s going to take the player away. Coulson had no idea it meant anything to her. Suddenly it’s like Daisy is a lot stranger to him than he believed. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, like being left out of some secret. He wants in.

He nods. “Keep it. I’m sorry I couldn’t find the records, though. They were good.”

“Yeah, I know,” Daisy agrees, a little too enthusiastic. He knows she had listened to a couple of them when she sometimes worked out of his office, back when he was Director years ago, but… maybe it wasn’t just a couple.

It seems like Daisy has also noticed that she’s given something away because she blushes ever so slightly (it’s nice, even though Coulson can’t see the pink on her cheeks well, he can tell it’s darker than the skin around, the world a little less pale) and turns around, leaving the blue record player in a corner and brushing blue on a patch of wall.

While Coulson watches. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to be helping, but he watches. Spying without spying. Invited to something that feels oddly private, as private as the the way Daisy’s whole body arches when she stands on (bare) tiptoes as the reaches the upper part of the wall.

She is in comfortable clothes and she’s already stained her sweater and jeans with dots of blue. Not the first time Coulson watches a woman paint a wall, but Audrey could do it without getting one speck on her, she could have done it in a party dress and high heels, everything so neat and the lines of paint so straight. Coulson is not sure why he makes the connection, or the comparison, why he thinks about that right now.

Daisy leaves the paintbrush.

“I can’t seem to pick the color for the curtains,” she says. “Maybe you can help?”

She grabs a catalogue from the floor and pushes it into Coulson’s hands. He moves his gaze from the pages to Daisy’s face, expectant. A bit anxious. Like maybe she doesn’t know how to do this.

“Perhaps I’m not the best person to advise you on this right now,” he admits, browsing through the pages anyway.

Daisy looks at the spot over his eyebrow, the fading scar where he got the blow.

“You can just look at the names of the colors, see if there’s something nice. You know a lot about this stuff, I don’t.”

He frowns at the comment. “I know a lot about curtains?”

“You know a lot about what’s classy, and what’s not.”

Coulson wants to contradict her, reassure her he doesn’t have any more taste than she does. But he knows that wouldn’t help. He knows what it’s like to feel like that. He remembers, even if it was so long ago.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll pick one that sounds nice.”

Yellow, perhaps. It would go well with the blue. Daisy yellow, to go with the robin’s egg blue. It’s probably too obvious, but he doesn’t think Daisy would mind. He tries to conjure the idea in his mind of yellow daisies, just to check he can imagine bright colors, even if he can’t see them right now.

“Is this what normal people do?” she seems to be wondering out loud, like it doesn’t matter that Coulson is there with her. He likes it, again makes him feel like a spy in a good way.

“Is that something you’d be interested in?” he asks her, curious.

Daisy turns around.

“Normal?” She chuckles. “I wouldn’t even begin to know what to do with normal.” Then he looks back at the wall. “No, I don’t want normal. I’m fine like this.”

Daisy of all people should want some version of her life that is kinder, less painful. But she doesn’t want it. It makes Coulson feel small, petty, inconsequential. It also makes him want to do better, her words burning something inside him and suddenly a week is such a long time to go back to the field, suddenly normal seems like the worst case scenario.

Except normal can be a breath, a pause, one morning painting a wall. It can be Daisy turning around with a smile, blue dots on the collar of her sweater.

“Let’s have some coffee,” she tells him.

 

**two**

He can’t stop thinking about it, Daisy taking a vacation at the same time he has to recover from an injury. It’s not very wise, strategy-wise. When she bought the house months ago Coulson thought it was a good idea, but she didn’t seem interested in doing something with it just yet. Until now.

“You don’t have to keep me occupied while I’m out of commission,” he tells her.

She’s making coffee.

There’s nothing in the house just yet. No furniture. No colors on the walls except for the blue she’s painting today. But there’s a espresso machine.

“What are you talking about? You’re the one helping me out,” she says. Then the tone changes. “I don’t have to have altruistic reasons to want to hang out. Do I?”

He guesses not, and it shouldn’t be so unthinkable, he likes hanging out with her too.

“Well, thank you, all that down time was driving me nuts.”

“I can imagine.”

She gives him an easy smile. Daisy is the worst patient ever, the worst injured agent. A few months ago she got a really bad case of the flu (a superhero with the flu, Coulson was a bit happy that could happen) and she had driven everyone in the base insane trying to oversee their missions while feverish and full of nasty germs. So yeah, she is genuine when she is commiserating.

“I wonder if we’re workaholics,” Coulson says.

She snorts.

“You wonder that _now_?”

They walked into the room again. He didn’t ask but he’s been guessing it’s going to be her bedroom. That she’d start there.

Her tone makes him smile all the way from the kitchen. The light from the large window looks a bit more golden to him now, more orange tincture around the edges of his vision.

“The first house of my own,” she says, sipping, looking a bit shy, as they sit on the floor. Coulson has a little trouble figuring out where to put this leg and the other, but Daisy is gracious enough not to mock him for it. Then he takes off his shoes, that seems to be the key. “I’ve never even rented anything. It’s ridiculous, I’m thirty-two and this is the first place of my own I’ve had.”

He can tell she is excited in a careful way.

“Thinking back… I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a flat I really lived in. When SHIELD recruited me I was still living with my mother. And then all the flats I had… I was always coming and going.”

“You haven’t picked many curtains, uh?”

“No.”

“All the more reason to help me with mine.”

“I guess.”

She is keeping her eyes very focused on him. She’s never stared that hard, this close.

“My biggest decorating project before this was deciding where in my van I should put my Hula girl.”

He wiggles his toes, his foot brushing against Daisy’s knee.

“Well, the dashboard is an excellent choice,” he jokes. “You might be a natural at this.”

She laughs again then she gets very serious.

The light turns when she kisses him, sliding her mouth softly, but naturally, over his. He would have thought he’d feel shock, if someone had told him this was going to happen, but he doesn’t. 

“Mmm, Daisy?” he doesn’t feel like questioning what’s happening - god, for the first time years he doesn’t feel like questioning anything.

“Is this okay?” she asks first, her fingers loosely wrapped around his knee.

Coulson nods.

“For all those curtains we didn’t get to choose,” she says.

He is not sure he understands what she means by that, but he’s pretty sure she’s right, and he kisses her back.

It should feel stranger, he thinks, kissing Daisy, running his hands over her. But it doesn’t, and that might be the most surprising thing about it all, more than her mouth and her curious, shy hands that seem afraid of intruding as she flattens them against his chest. He knows Daisy is not shy, and he has watched her jump into romances head on first, so he wonders about the slowness here, the carefulness.

He slips his hand under her oversized sweater. She’s wearing nothing underneath. After that revelation soon they are lying on the floor, over the bed sheet Daisy spread to avoid staining the woodwork with blue paint.

“I don’t have a bed yet, sorry,” she says, embarrassed laughter from her mouth to his.

She is gorgeous in unexpected ways. Coulson can’t believe it has taken him so long to realize that.

And he hasn’t been with someone, hasn’t touched someone like this in… the fact that the date doesn’t come immediately to his mind says it all. He bluffles a bit, pretending he doesn’t notice his own shaking hands when he tries to take off his clothes. He’s silently grateful she wants him on top, so he can go as slow as he wants. He’s not sure what he’s doing, but it’s feels like it’s exactly what he’s supposed to be doing. Daisy runs her hand over his prosthetic, kisses the fading scar on his head, of course she does.

Suddenly he remembers a line from a Tom Waits song he likes - something about “quiet evenings trembling next to you”.

But it’s not evening, it’s not even noon yet.

He looks at the paint stuck under her fingernails, as she closes her hand around his. His vision must be coming back, he can see the blue perfectly.

 

**three**

He’s dozed off but it’s second, the smell of paint and coffee bringing him back immediately.

Over them looms the big window. If he wonders if there are curious neighbours ogling Daisy’s nakedness, or his own exposed butt, right now. Somehow that doesn’t sound too bad. He’s gotten that lazy, summer sunlight feeling in his limbs, even if the shaft of light falling on their skin look subdued. He wonders if when he’s recovered he’d look at Daisy like this, lying next to him, and it’ll be like seeing her naked for the first time. He hopes it feels like that.

He wishes they had music, that he had found the records back in that storage room. He would have wanted to stroke her hair while music was playing. He feels sad about it for a moment, then remembers they can do this again some other time.

Daisy turns in his arms, yawning while she throws one leg over his thigh. She makes it look natural, like they have done this a thousand times - or rather like she has thought about this before. Has she thought about this before this morning? Again it seems like there’s so much about her to learn, he’s always learning her, there’s always one more thing, one more admirable or endearing or heartbreaking thing to learn. For now, just the shape of her hipbone under his hand.

She laughs when she notices the window, how it exposes them to the people in the next building.

“I really need some curtains,” she says.

“You really do,” Coulson tells her, trying to be funny or charming, trying to remember how to be those things, feeling like his life before this morning was just a rehearsal, fifty-six years of getting ready for Daisy.

She grabs his chin between her fingers, turning his head. 

He’s never seen her eyes this close. He can’t wait for the real color.

“Hey,” she says.

“What?”

“I can paint these walls again if you don’t like the blue. If it makes you feel… you know… because of the...”

Coulson stares at her.

“I would like you to be comfortable around here.”

Coulson stares at her.

“I would like you to spend a lot of time here in the future.”

He closes his hand over her blue-stained fingers. He tries to think of something charming or funny to say, but this is not a rehearsal, this is not his past self. He’s here, right now, with her.

“Yes,” he says. “That’s what I want to. But I like the blue. You don’t have to change it.”

Daisy looks at him, lit up like he has just given her the record player again, or like she expected him to reject her, because she always expects that.

“Yellow,” he says.

“What?”

“The curtains. Yellow. The color of yellow daisies.”

She drops a kiss on his shoulder.

“That’s pretty sentimental,” she comments.

He nods.

He doesn’t mind.

He wants her to learn everything that’s left to learn about him. Even things she already suspected, because she is Daisy and so damn smart, he wants her to _know_. It’s different. It’s like the difference between reading the name of a color and being able to look at it.

Anyway sentimental will fit in here, among Daisy’s things.


End file.
